Dear Parramatta Members and Fans,
After a good win over the Broncos, I’m looking forward to this week and seeing if we can back up the energy levels that we played with against Brisbane and the positive approach we had with the footy.
We have spoken about that as a group at training. We want to be positive with our approach with the ball but at the end of the day it is not always going to turn out the way it did the other night. Sometimes you are going to make some errors and turn over the footy but as long as we are willing to keep turning up to defend and turn them away, we’ll continue to play like that.
I know we played some entertaining footy but there was a lot of hard work done by our outside backs with their carries and our big fellas got us forward and got us on the front foot which allowed Chris Sandow and the like to play off the back of.
The other aspect of our game that needs special mention is how Reni Maitua carried out his job to terrorise Peter Wallace on Brisbane’s right edge when we had the ball. He did an outstanding job with that to tire Wallace and the skipper, Nathan Hindmarsh just continues to be a workhorse for our club.
It’s just the little things that Nathan does that a lot of people wouldn’t realise that he does every week. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, the time of the game or the result - he plays right to the 80th minute and that is why everyone has that much respect for him and loves playing with him.
He stands for what we are trying to achieve in these final weeks of the season, keep turning up no matter the time of the game or the situation for your team-mates.
This week we have a rematch with the Wests Tigers, who beat us at Parramatta Stadium in Round 8.
While we didn’t get the result what encouraged the coaching staff most was that in the last half an hour of the game. If you go back and have a look at the tape our defence was spot on.
Yes we scored 30 points in the final 13 minutes, but we actually whacked them around a bit in that second half and it emphasised how important the defensive side of football is in order for us to play that kind of attacking footy afterwards.
Monday’s game at Campbelltown Stadium will only be our second game in about 16 days, so it gives us a chance to have three full training sessions with all our troops in back to back weeks, which only happens when you have those longer turnarounds. So it is a bonus to the preparation of the team.
We’ll be taking the same approach into the Tigers game - we’ll be positive with the ball and nice and tough with our defence.
Cheers,
Brad Arthur
_______________________________________________________________________________
The more I hear from Brad, the more I like the way he thinks. Particuarly the point he's made a couple of times now about the price of expansive, attacking football being a committed team approach to defense when the occasional inevitable errors come up.
Replies
Defense matters. And defense starts with player attitude and energy levels.